


World Enough

by Salemshield



Series: Vegetable Love [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Stucky - Fandom
Genre: Bucky Barnes Recovering, M/M, Non canon-compliant after Winter Soldier, Post-Winter Soldier, the angst is strong with this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:35:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26942239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Salemshield/pseuds/Salemshield
Summary: Recovery is progressing.  (Sleepless nights abound.)
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, James “Bucky” Barnes & Steve Rogers
Series: Vegetable Love [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1966021
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25





	World Enough

Steve dreaded the nights.

At first, it was because of the sheer terror in Bucky’s voice, the sound ripping his already destroyed throat, howling through the door of his room andstraight into Steve’s heart.He spoke no words, usually—just screams and sobs and whimpers. Still, despite his reticence during the day, sometimes Bucky shouted a “NONONONONO!” at night. And once, after a long bout of silence, he’d spoken a low, toneless “ _Nyet_.” The screaming after that one had been unbearable. 

(They had no neighbors to wake, thank heavens. Steve knew it was Tony’s doing, but he couldn’t bring himself to say anything.Hadn’t even texted Tony once since Bucky came back. Not after what he’d read in the files.)

On bad nights, like the _nyet_ night, Steve retreated from his post outside of Bucky’s closed door.But even though Bucky didn’t talk to Steve for four months, not asking for water or saying hello or responding to Steve’s “ ‘Night, Buck” each evening, Steve still waited each night, sleeping fitfully, coming to count on the screams like a midnight alarm.He sometimes woke himself up minutes before they began, his rhythms attuned to Bucky’s suffering, and stumbled to wait across the hall.

Why he kept getting up, he didn’t know.Bucky was so cold toward him after he came home, so closed off, that Steve never ventured into his bedroom—except that once—even during the day.Regardless, when he heard the nightmares begin, he invariably found himself standing helplessly at Bucky’s door. 

~~~~~

The first few nights, he had spoken to Bucky through the door, asking if he was alright, if he needed Steve to come in.There was never anything but silence.Steve had camped out in the hallway even after it was clear that the nightmare was over.He was determined to answer immediately should Bucky call out to him (and more than a little terrified that Bucky might run away again).After a while, though, Steve realized that Bucky was about as likely to ask for help as he was to grow back his left arm.So Steve took to sleeping in his room, bolting for Bucky’s door as he screamed, then returning to his own when the screaming stopped.

His deepest shame (deeper even than his failure to grab Bucky’s hand as he fell, deeper than his stupidity in letting the brass convince him that there was no point in retrieving the body) was that on the really bad nights, he left before the screaming stopped.

Once, about a month in, Bucky had been shouting for longer than usual, more intensely.Steve, still hovering outside the door after over an hour, hadn’t been able to stand it any longer.In the middle of a hoarse and broken wail, Steve actually opened the door, dim light from the kitchen down the hall spilling in, illuminating Bucky’s rigid body, curled up on itself as he choked out the last shards of his voice.At the intrusion of light, his head snapped up.Steve caught the tangled hair, the bright gleam of one red, teary eye.He paused for a moment as the world stopped, air heavy between them. 

“Sorry, Buck—I just.I mean, do you need...?” Steve had stuttered in the face of that glare.Bucky hadn’t moved a muscle as his breathing slowed.Just stared at Steve, expressionless, until his heart rate returned to normal.

Then he had laid back down, deliberately holding Steve’s gaze before rolling over, showing Steve his back.

It was the loudest “Fuck you” that Bucky had ever spoken.

Steve didn’t open the door after that.And on the really bad nights, the nights when the nightmares lasted beyond endurance, he started retreating to his room in the middle of it.As Bucky was reliving the worst of the torture, the chair, the killing—Steve had no idea what the worst of it was, for Bucky—Steve was hiding under his covers, weeping until he fell asleep from exhaustion. 

Still, like clockwork, round about midnight he found himself hovering outside Bucky’s door, waiting out the terror or, on the bad nights, hiding like a coward.Either way, every night, the voice of his best friend echoed in his memory, the shout from a childhood baseball game and the shout from the train and the shout from the bedroom across the hall blending into one frenzied horror, a wordless litany of all Steve’s loss.It stewed into a poisonous brew, spiced with his guilt since that day on the bridge when he realized that he should have gone back after Bucky fell.With his utter self-loathing as he failed even now to save Bucky from him own demons.

Steve dreaded the nights for four interminable months, terrified that Bucky would never speak words—only screams.But that was all before.Now, Bucky had started speaking—actually speaking real _sentences_ , to _Steve_ —and it was glorious.

~~~~~

After the Incident of the Lemon Pasta, Bucky had started answering questions instead of just grunting.It delighted Steve to the point that he’d started to ask Bucky the most inane questions just to hear his voice.

This morning, a random Thursday on a calendar that didn’t matter much to a semi-retired Avenger and a former POW barely starting to get a handle on reality, Steve was making coffee while Bucky sat reading on the couch.His first question was a casual, “Hey, Buck.You still like sugar in your coffee, right?I ain’t been makin’ it wrong all this time?”

Bucky glanced up from his book, briefly making eye contact before looking down again.“No, Steve,” he muttered.Was that a hint of amusement?“You ain’t been makin’ it wrong.”

And then a few minutes later, as Steve handed Bucky his mug in his flesh hand, it was, “There ya go, Buck.Careful, yeah?It’s hot.”

Bucky didn’t look up, but his eyebrow raised.“Yeah, Steve.”He was definitely amused.(Steve didn’t care.)“I know it’s hot.”

And then as Steve was drinking his coffee and scrolling through his phone, he dropped a “Hey, Buck.You seen any movies lately?” And only after it was out of his mouth did he realize how ridiculous a question that was.He hesitantly glanced up from his screen.

Well.Bucky wasn’t honoring that one with a verbal response.He just stared at Steve for a moment, gray eyes flashing—was that anger? Annoyance?—before continuing to read.

 _Rogers, you are a fuckin’ idiot_.Bucky had barely been out of the apartment in almost five months.And the only places he went, as far as Steve could tell (not that he was following him even though he was totally following him) were the bodega down on Clinton or the Little Free Library a few blocks over.He would go to the bodega randomly, sometimes on a Monday or sometimes on a Wednesday, sometimes in the morning and sometimes after dinner.He bought random things, too.The first time, it’d been a newspaper.The time after that, a burrito, which he’d eaten on the way home.At one point there was some sort of Mexican candy. 

It was possible he was trolling Steve, come to think of it. 

At the Little Free Library, he picked up several books per trip, read them in a matter of days, and returned them for more.So far, the small stand hadn’t run out of new reading material, but Steve figured it was only a matter of time.He’d tried to look at the books, surreptitiously, to see if Bucky had any preferences these days, but he seemed happy to read anything, in any genre.There’d been a few Westerns, a couple of romance novels, a bunch of pulpy sci-fi, and even a battered old Calculus textbook—which Bucky had read cover to cover one Sunday afternoon.Steve wanted to order Bucky some books but didn’t want him to think Steve was invading his privacy, so he was holding off.For now. 

So Bucky hadn’t been to the movies, no.Steve didn’t leave the apartment for longer than a couple of hours at a time, either, to run or grocery shop or meet Nat that one awful time for lunch.

He cleared his throat.“Oh, right.” _Soldier on, Captain_. “Well, says here there’s that new Mars movie—you know, about the astronauts on the first manned mission to Mars?” 

He waited for a response, but Bucky just kept reading.Maybe there was a flicker of an eyebrow? 

“Do you still like stuff about space?I mean, you used to, but...”Bucky kept reading.Definitely no eyebrow movement.

Steve sighed, rubbing his hair vigorously with one hand while tossing his phone beside him on the couch. Last night hadn’t been a really bad one, so Steve had been able to go back to bed after the shouting—sometime around 1:00 a.m.—but he had hardly slept.As usual.

They sat in silence, the only sound the turning pages as Bucky barreled through his book.Steve moped until his stomach chimed in.He stretched his arms, about to go make some lunch, when Bucky himself muttered. 

“Fgn...sk...qusn...ass.”

Steve’s heart leaped.Buck rarely spoke unless spoken to.But his voice was so raspy that Steve missed what he was saying.

“What was that, Buck?”

“I said, you seem to have forgotten how to ask an actual question.Dumbass.”

 _Dumbass_!He’d gotten a “punk” out of Bucky once last week, but that’s as far as his teasing had gone recently.Steve tried to hide his grin as he parried, “I ain’t forgotten, jerk.‘S all I’ve been doing all morning.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” mumbled Bucky.“Full o’ questions. _Dumb_ questions.”

“Awww, Buck.I just like to hear your voice.You know that.Don’t get all sore about it.”Steve tried to keep his voice light, but he was freaking out.What if Bucky stopped answering his dumb questions?What if he stopped talking again? _Oh, god, he can hear my heart pounding.Calm down, Rogers_.What if—

“I ain’t ready to go to the movies yet.”Bucky interrupted Steve’s panic spiral.

“Huh?”He’d forgotten the Mars film.

“The movie.You wanted to go see it.But I ain’t ready to be inside.You know, with other people.In the dark.”This last bit barely whispered.

Steve suddenly felt like a dumbass for real.He wanted Bucky to get excited about the movie—it was about space!Bucky loved space! _You don’t know if Bucky even likes_ _space stuff anymore, Rogers_. But he hadn’t even _thought_ about the logistics of getting to the theater, buying a ticket, and sitting in a dark, enclosed room with a bunch of loud civilians throwing popcorn around.God, what a mess he was making of this.

“Oh!Yeah, Buck, that’s okay.It’s not getting good reviews anyway.I’m.”He paused, not wanting to screw this up.“I’m not very good at—I mean, I have—”

“Yup,” interrupted Bucky.

“But I didn’t even—“

“You said you ain’t good at something. I was agreeing. Whatever it is, you ain’t good at it.”He glanced up from under his hair, eyebrow raised, to see Steve’s reaction.

Steve burst out laughing.Bucky’s mouth twitched as Steve leaned forward instinctively to punch Bucky’s arm.He caught himself halfway there, though, drawing back his fist into his lap.He tried to cover the awkward moment.“Oh, look, he’s been talking for a week and suddenly he’s a comedian.”

Bucky almost-laughed.Sort of a gargled cough.It was beautiful. _Yes!Go, Rogers!_

“But seriously, Buck—I gotta say this. I’m—I ain’t very good at, erm, well, any of this.I mean, I _love_ having you here—I _want_ to have you here, so don’t ever leave, right?—But I mean, like with the movie thing.I keep expecting you to react like you used to, and I mean, I know that you’re not the same, I get it, but sometimes in the moment I forget, and so—”He paused, taking a breath. 

“Steve.”Bucky took the moment to interrupt.“It’s okay.I know you’re trying.And I knew you were asking me to go to the movies without actually asking me because—and this point bears repeating—you’re a _dumbass_.”Steve snorted while Bucky continued, “I just didn’t want to make you ma—disappoint you.By saying no.But then I made—I disappointed you by not saying so.I just—” He blew a breath out of his nose.“Sorry.”

Steve’s heart caught at Bucky’s tone.And at the clenched fist by his side. _No.Not again._ Steve tentatively reached out his hand, slowly, telegraphing his movement.It landed on Bucky’s knee. 

“Bucky.”He tried to make his voice gentle, not admonishing.“No.You won’t ever disappoint me. _Ever_.”He squeezed the fabric and flesh beneath his fingers, trying to convey his earnestness without spooking Bucky.“I’m just...so goddamned grateful that you’re here.We ain’t gotta ever go anywhere again, if you don’t want to.”

Bucky’s eyes focused on Steve’s hand.Steve squeezed again and noted that Bucky’s fist started to relax.

“I ain’t saying I don’t ever want to go to the movies, Steve.Just—not now.I’m too—it’s too much.Being around people.In the dark.”He looked away from the hand on his knee and down at the floor.His own hand was back to the fist.

Steve squeezed a little harder, heart sinking as he looked at that fist. “That’s okay, Buck. We’ll go at your pace. You just tell me what you want to do, what you’re ready for, okay?I won’t push.”

At that, Bucky looked up, directly at Steve, both eyebrows in his classic I-know-you’re-lying-to-me-you-little-shit expression.

Steve smiled at the familiar face. _God, I missed that_.“Okay, I‘ll _try_ not to push.Deal?”

He watched as the fist relaxed.Bucky slid his fingers—his real ones, still tense—under Steve’s own and shook the tips of his fingers. “Deal.”

Steve wanted to just sit there, letting Bucky hold his fingertips.But he didn’t want to make it awkward or to overwhelm him.So he started to slide his hand out of Bucky’s, but Bucky pulled him back with a jerk.

“You got movies on your TV, right?” Bucky nodded to the giant black flatscreen on the wall.

Steve startled.He’d tried to watch TV with Bucky when he first came back, but mostly he would just stare through the screen.No matter what Steve put on—documentaries, silly sitcoms, even war movies—he just stared straight ahead.Until the time Steve had typed in the channel number wrong and they’d landed on some horror movie where the character on screen at the time was buried alive in a coffin underground.As the guy flicked his lighter and tried to claw his way out, Bucky’s hands clenched and his whole body went rigid.His eyes slid from the screen to the wall next to it.His breathing got fast and shallow.His forehead broke out in a sweat.

Steve left the TV off, after that.But now...

“Yeah?”He waited for Bucky’s nod.“Well, sure.Sam helped me set up...let’s see.”He grabbed the remote and the screen flickered on to the bright blue menu. “There’s Netflix.And On Demand, which I think is just like regular TV except you don’t have to watch it at a particular time.And then there’s some channels just for movies...”He scrolled through the list for a minute, looking for the movie section.“Aha! Here we go. But I think I can search for movies by type, too.”He looked expectantly at Bucky before catching himself. _Ask the question, Rogers_.“What sort of movie do you want to watch, Buck?”

“Space movie.”

“Yeah? You still like space, huh?”Steve was scrolling through the options when he realized— _maybe Bucky doesn’t know_ —“Hey, Buck.You know they, I mean, men walked on the moon, right?In ‘69?”

Bucky’s eyes slid from the screen’s blue menu to give Steve that Look again.The you’re-an-idiot look. 

“Oh.Well.I don’t know how much you were...umm—awake for?”He started scrolling through the menu options again.“I guess you probably know more than I did when I woke up.”

He glanced over. Bucky’s hand was toying with his shirt hem.Like it was thinking about clenching, maybe, depending on the direction of this conversation. 

“But we don’t have to talk about it or anything.‘S fine.” He started scrolling through the menu again.

“I didn’t.” Bucky’s fingers were gripping his shirt more tightly.

“You didn’t?” 

“I didn’t know more than you when I—when we—“ He shrugged, the tiny movement encompassing everything that happened on the bridge, the helicarrier.“When I remembered you.”

Steve processed that for a moment.“Oh.”He wasn’t about to ask what that meant.About how much—or how little—Bucky had remembered just before they plunged into the Potomac.So he settled on, “So...you weren’t awake in ‘69?”

Bucky shrugged again.“Maybe.Still working on that.But I read about the moon later.Before I came ho—back.To New York.”

“Huh.”Steve hadn’t missed the slip, his heart flipping momentarily that Bucky maybe thought of this as home. _Keep it together, Rogers_. “So what—you caught up on the whole twentieth century before you showed up here?”

Bucky shook his head, hair dangling in his eyes. “Not all of it.Just the big stuff.Hard to blend in when the last time you were awake, people were wearing ridiculous threads.”

“ _Threads_?” Steve chortled. “I guess you were awake during the disco era.”He chuckled as Bucky’s mouth moved in the direction of a smile.“But who knew the lingo would linger?I _know_ you were awake after the ‘70s!” And then he immediately wanted to kick himself. _Goddamn it, Rogers._ Of course Bucky was awake after that.A Tony-shaped knot had carved out a permanent place in his belly once he and Nat had pieced together the Soldier’s history. _Not now.Not now_.He shoved the issue of Howard and Maria back into the cellar in his brain where it lived.

“ _Any_ way,” Bucky continued pointedly—ignoring or ignorant of the dangerous conversational precipice Steve had guided them to—“I had to figure out what to wear.And what people were talking about.And, you know, who the president is and stuff.So—I read.Old newspapers. And those little boxes with the books are great.”

“Oh?You mean the Little Free Libraries?”Steve pretended he hadn’t watched Bucky visit one a dozen times.“Yeah, those are awesome.But,” Steve continued, sensing an opportunity to gather intel about Bucky’s current interests, “you know, we could get you an _actual_ library card.And then you could pick what you want...not what’s left over.And, I mean, obviously we wouldn’t use your real name or anything...” His voice trailed off, realizing this was a conversational precipice for _him_.

The one time he’d met with Nat, a couple of months after Bucky was home, he had asked her about it—getting Bucky some identification.She was, to put it mildly, _not_ on board with the plan.At least until she was sure that Bucky was Bucky again, that Steve wasn’t out of his mind for choosing to live with the world’s deadliest and perhaps-still-brainwashed assassin, and “maybe you should think about bringing him in, Steve.Just for his own good.”

After stiffly speaking some words that he had never spoken to a woman—not even that Hydra operative who had ambushed him and Sam in Helsinki, when they’d still been looking for Bucky, and _she_ had actually deserved it with her acid pen that had burned holes in Steve’s _suit_ and the _skin_ underneath—Steve had stalked out of that lunch in what he later realized was a snit.He was deeply ashamed ( _add it to the list, Rogers_ ), but he couldn’t bring himself to apologize.Not about this.About Bucky.As a result, he hadn’t actually spoken to Natasha in over two months.

He did still get texts from random phone numbers with the looking eyes emoji.And once a heart.He’d sent a heart back to that one.

Now, Bucky sighed, though his eyes were doing that crinkly thing they did when he was amused. “Yeah, Steve. I _know_ how to get a library card. And a fake ID.But again—not ready.”He nodded at the menu, which was showing info about a movie with the word “space” in the title. “How ‘bout this one?It’s from the ‘80s.Much more awesome than the ‘70s.”

And that’s how Steve and Bucky watched _SpaceCamp_.

~~~~~

That night, Steve woke up at his usual time, body tense as he waited for Bucky’s night terrors.They did not disappoint.The whimpers started small but soon became full-throated screams.Steve was stumbling out of bed to hover at Bucky’s door when—for the first time since Bucky had started talking again—the screams coalesced into a word. 

“STEVE!”

Before he made it to the door, another scream.

“NO!”

He skidded to a halt outside of Bucky’s door.“Buck?Bucky, you okay?”

He could hear Bucky sobbing.

“Buck?I’m going to come in, okay?”

Steve gently opened the door, the light from the kitchen nightlight trickling in.Bucky was curled up on his side, just like last time, hugging himself in a tight ball, sort of rocking.

“Bucky?”Steve approached the bed slowly.“You okay?You awake?”

“ _Steviesteviestevie_ ” whispered Bucky.“ _Nononono_.” He cried silently, body shaking.

Steve knelt down by the bed, close to Bucky’s head.“Buck?Are you with me?” He reached out a hand to pet Bucky’s tangled hair, but hesitated—if Bucky was still asleep, it could go very badly for them both.The last thing he wanted to do was trigger the Soldier’s reflexes.Or get punched in the face by a metal fist.

“Bucky?” he tried again.“I’m right here, okay?”

The shaking stopped, punctuated with a sniffle. “Stevie?”Bucky’s voice was just wrecked.It sounded like it hurt him to say just those two syllables.

“Yeah, Buck, I’m here,” said Steve, trying to control his own voice, his hand still hovering over Bucky’s head.“Is it—is it okay if I touch you?”

Another sniffle.Then a jerky nod.That was all Steve needed; he gently pet Bucky’s head, smoothing out the messy strands of sweaty hair and murmuring nonsense.“Shhh.‘S okay.Just a dream.You’re okay.You’re here in your room in our place in Brooklyn.”He kept talking about stupid things, trying to ground Bucky the way all of the books he’d read recently had said he should.It was the first time he’d been able to put his knowledge to use, though.“We had that tomato soup for dinner, yeah?After we watched the movie, and—“. He stopped as Bucky suddenly stiffened. He lifted his hand off of Bucky’s head.“Buck?”

Bucky looked up through the hair still in his face.“No.”

Steve blinked, exhausted and anxious and not understanding.“No?”

Bucky lowered his head again, curling up more tightly in his ball.“Bad movie.”

Steve thought about that—they’d both laughed at the cheesiness of the whole thing, how utterly absurd that a bunch of kids would accidentally launch an _actual_ space shuttle.“Oh—“ he replied.“I guess...I mean, it wasn’t that bad, I thought, but sure...”.

Bucky looked up again, tear-streaked cheeks catching the light.“The space part.”

Steve furrowed his brow.The space part was the coolest, he thought—they got to see what it might be like to fly the space shuttle.It was primitive compared to the Quinjet, of course, but—

Bucky interrupted Steve’s rambling thoughts.“Where they almost floated away.”

Steve’s brain finally caught up with him. “Oh...OH !That’s what you dreamed? That we were...floating away?”

Bucky shook his head. “Not we. Just you. Couldn’t...grab you. In time.”

And wasn’t that just a kicker.

Steve huffed as he sat down on the floor, back against the bed, Bucky’s head almost touching his shoulder.“Yeah. Tell me about it.No, you know what? Don’t. I know that dream already.”

They sat in silence, the only sounds the mechanical susurrus of the midnight city.

After a while, as Bucky’s breathing slowed, Steve realized his ass was getting numb.He shifted so he could stand up and go back to bed when a hand grabbed his shoulder.

“Stay.” 

So he did.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a thing for _SpaceCamp_. Fond memories of youth and all of that. It’s completely cheesy but I will watch it whenever.
> 
> Oh, and the Little Free Library is a Thing. Take a book, leave a book, totally free. You may have one in your community! Ours was removed (thanks, COVID), but I think they will put it back once we are through it. Be safe!


End file.
